Compassion Group Notes - September 23

Attachment Styles - Characteristics of Ambivalent Attachment Style

Needs constant reassurance that they are loved.

• Feels insecure within the relationship

• Need constant reassurance about their value and lovability

• Is always worried that they are going to be rejected or cheated on

• Always preoccupied with the relationship

• Jealous and controlling

• Thinks partner/friends are going to abandon them

• Calls any lack of physical or emotional presence their needs abandonment

• Displays clingy, demanding behavior like constant public displays of affection - sucking and emotionally dependent on the other

• Very needy and childlike in their affections

• Very poor personal boundaries

• Spends much time worrying about what the other person wants, needs and feels.

• Cannot understand why their partner might need personal space

• Partner may feel suffocated, stifled and swallowed up, engulfed

• Is always bringing up past family issues of rejection - often have PTSD as diagnosis

• Interprets everything through a lens of rejection and abandonment

• Moody and difficult to deal with, highly emotional, often storms out and has tantrums, or weepy and repentant

• Takes offense at the slightest little thing and blows it out of proportion

• Takes the partner’s behaviors very personally and has distorted meaning attached to what others do or do not do

• Communicates through arguing or conflict, will wind their partner up and wear their partner down

• Blames and projects on to others, takes no responsibility - has no inner secure relationship

• If they do not get the “love,”, they need they are more likely to be unfaithful to their partner - often have serial relationships in desperation to get needs met

• They will quickly change from feeling strongly in love to craving independence - swings from dependence to independence

• Manipulates, seduces and traps people in a relationship

• Have pets that they treat as babies

For more on this we will be exploring the adult ways of relating back to childhood socialization in our upcoming Class next year

Re-Parenting II - Boundaries and Attachment Styles

watch our newsletter and facebook for updates on times and dates.

Consider now how you try to get your needs met externally, through other people, external behaviors, substance addictions etc.

If you do - you need this course!

How does the Internal split between head (rational thought) and gut (intuition, feeling, need in the body) happen?

Consider these statements and see how you literally went up and out away from your body, gut, emotions and needs to be safe in the system in which you grew up. What is the message inherent in these statements. See how all of this is the opposite of what is needed, which is to go in and deep and embrace with the heart. Start listening to what you say to yourself to perpetuate the split.

Buck up!

You should rise above it - take the high road

Get over it already!

Snap out of it!

Pull it together

Grow up - stop acting like a baby

You need to rise to the occassion

What can I do to lift you up?

"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called Ego."
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Our Assumptive World - Making Assumptions makes an ASS of U and Me.

Our past experiences with other people, color the way in which we experience people in our present lives. This is particularly true of the meaning we made of experiences as a child when we did not have the capacity in awareness to perceive accurately or interpret the actions of others and the world correctly. The extent to which we are unaware of the meaning, beliefs, feelings, attitudes and impulses we have had towards people in our past, is the extent to which we will unconsciously transfer these same beliefs, interpretations, feelings, attitudes and impulses on to people in our present lives. We are especially likely to transfer feelings we had in relationship to particularly powerful people, such as our parents. This results in faulty assumptions and distorted reality. For example, if I grew up in a family where there was a great deal of pain, I might see the world through a pair of depressing, blue tinted glasses. I might assume that a lot of things that are really other colors, like yellow and purple, are blue. If I grew up in a family where the predominant belief and way of dealing with life was denial, I am probably seeing the world through a pair of rose-colored glasses. I may assume that things that are really other colors have a rosy glow to them. We make assumptions based on past experience and the meaning we made of these experiences.

I might assume that when someone is looking moody, upset or bad tempered, that “I did something wrong.” This might have been true as a child. It might be true that every time a parent was mad they blamed you for it and said it was your fault. However, this template of assumption that everything is your fault if someone else has a feeling, is bound to create problems for you and the relationship. It is an assumption that becomes all about you, with no empathy, interest or concern for the other person.

So if we go back to the Ambivalent Attachment Style characteristics above and take one of those behaviors such as “I am going to be abandoned.” we can see that in adulthood it is not possible to be “abandoned.” This is a word to use when a small baby is placed on the steps of the church. However, if our early experiences are of being left alone without resource, then we will form a belief that every time someone leaves us to go to work, visit a friend, goes shopping, doesn’t tend to our every need, that they are “abandoning us,” and be filled with anxiety. This is an assumption based on the experience of a small child without resource. It is not the current reality. Clearly we can see that this will soon result in sabotage and problems in an adults life.

The possibility of misinterpreting another person’s behavior and making false assumptions and interpretations is increased to the extent we are unaware of ourselves, our past and the color of the glasses that we wear. The possibility of misinterpreting our own behavior is greater to the extent we are unaware of our motivations, past experiences and what they meant, the connection between past and present and the connection between our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Unfortunately, we do not know when we are making false assumptions because it is a process that is out of awareness, having formed in an unaware state of consciousness of a child. For this reason, it is imperative that we are committed to the process of becoming more self-aware. Growth happens when we:

• are curious about ourselves

• ask questions about our own inner feelings, thoughts and impulses

• examine our motivations and reactions and consequences of our choices

• have the humility to be vigilant to the possibility of our own insanity of not being in touch with Reality and are imposing our personal reality on to others

The unexamined life of assumptions leads to a never ending cycle of hurt and pain in life. Examine your assumptions about yourself and others carefully. Seek to understand what is really going on in the present instead of assuming you “know,” what is going on based on the faulty, limited and tragic understanding of a child.

Find examples this month of ways in which you have made assumptions and jumped to conclusions without pausing to consider other lens through which you see the world, and without regard for, or awareness of what might be going on for the other person.

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make -- bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake -- if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.”
~Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy

Defense - to Distance, Avoid and Deny internally:

Do you use the defense of distancing from your anger and blame, by showing concern and care for someone else? This is care masquerading as judgment. Notice this.

Defense - to Tell a Story about your life, to speak a lot, to cover anxiety with words?

Do you do this? Your anxiety needs you to be silent and present to it. Amend the story you have told yourself about your life to fit with a bigger and more expansive reality of what really happened to you in the past.

There is nothing wrong, bad or broken, there is just something you cannot see yet.

~Charisse Lyons

Visualization Exercise:

Consider what kind of building you are. A commercial high rise, a holy temple or church, a crystal palace, a medieval castle, a French Chateau, a country cottage, a log cabin. Allow your imagination to paint a picture for you. Now consider your stewardship of this building. Do you live in it, or outside of it? Do you prefer some rooms to others? Do you have locked off rooms? Are you fully transparent with nothing to hide? It is clean, tidy, organized. Do you know where to find everything or are there things that have been tucked away and forgotten? Is it a place of refuge, or commerce? What is this imagined building telling you about yourself. Do not censor whatever comes up from your consciousness. Just allow and accept it, examine and consider what it means.

Weaponizing Anger - Defense

If you do not know how often you are angry, you will not see the ways in which you weaponize this feeling through blame, attack, projection, and boundary violations of every kind. The major defenses against know about your anger are denial, projection, justification, intellectualization, judgment and blame. Consider how often you pick up weapons against yourself - and others. Draw each of the weapons you use - are fast and straight, blunt and hammering, subtle and sly? Start making a concerted effort to notice and feel your anger instead of distancing and avoiding what you are really feeling - a feeling created by your own assumptions about yourself and others.